SF News Uber and Lyft Drivers Detail Five Most Common Screw-Ups Made by Self-Driving Cars There’s no love lost between human rideshare drivers and the self-driving car companies that hope to replace them, but the rideshare drivers are quick to point out that the robotaxis are nowhere near up to the task yet.
SF News Day Around the Bay: NYT Reporters Try Out Waymo's Robotaxi Service Three NYT reporters took Waymo's paid robotaxi service for a spin; the death last month of a 63-year-old Bayview woman has been deemed accidental; and Los Gatos 'party mom' Shannon O'Connor missed a court appearance today.
SF News SF City Attorney Files Motion to Halt Roll-Out of More Self-Driving Cruise and Waymo Robotaxis City Attorney David Chiu is ramping up the pushback against Waymo and Cruise self-driving robotaxis in SF, filing a motion with the state to reverse their approval of unlimited robotaxis on San Francisco streets.
SF Politics Friday’s North Beach Self-Driving Car Clusterf*** Has SF Officials Begging the State to Walk Back Approval Barely 24 hours after getting state approval to run their self-driving cars at all hours in SF, Cruise robotaxis froze up en masse in North Beach Friday night. Now SF City Hall is urging a state commission to go into reverse on that approval.
Business & Tech One Autonomous Vehicle Appeared to Chase a Fire Truck; Another Blocked a Fire Truck From Getting Out of Its Station On the eve of a key vote by a state commission on whether to allow Cruise and Waymo to further expand their autonomous vehicle testing and begin taking paid passengers all over SF, we're getting to see some of the 55 incident reports filed by the SF Fire Department involving AVs.
SF News Cops, Firefighters, and of Course Taxi Drivers Tee Off on Self-Driving Robotaxis Before Key Regulatory Vote Firefighters complain “it is not our job to babysit their vehicles” as Cruise and Waymo road glitches are on the uptick ahead of Thursday’s CPUC vote on whether to allow more robotaxis in SF. Oh, and Willie Brown is now a lobbyist for Cruise.
Business & Tech Renegade Group Disabling Self-Driving Cars With Orange Cones Speaks Out A local TV station spent a night with the monkey-wrench gang that’s been stopping self-driving cars with mere orange cones, and yes, it seems this incredibly simple hack does indeed work.
Business & Tech SF Says Driverless Car Problems ‘Skyrocketing,’ Techies Fume at Our Lack of Enthusiasm for the Glitches The SFMTA says that dangerous incidents with self-driving robotaxis have increased exponentially in recent months, while Cruise, Waymo, and their associated venture capitalist types excoriate SF for not adequately loving the buggy self-driving cars.
Business & Tech Pranksters Claim They Can Stop Self-Driving Cars With Orange Cones, Waymo and Cruise Not Amused A viral video this week made the curious claim that self-driving robotaxis on SF streets can be brought to a halt with the placement of an orange cone on the vehicle’s hood. Cruise and Waymo have both responded that the jokers doing this need to knock it off.
SF News SF Fire Chief Fumes Over Self-Driving Robotaxis Blocking First Responders Dozens of Times This Year San Francisco Fire Department Chief Jeanine Nicholson notes there have been 39 incidents of Cruise and Waymo robotaxis blocking first responders this year alone, and says the robot cars are “not ready for prime time.”
Business & Tech San Francisco Could Soon Become a Free-for-All of Self-Driving Taxis You may already think there are too many self-driving robocars on the streets of SF, roaming creepily around with names like "Mocha" and "Juice." But the cars are actually pretty restricted in what they can do and where they can go right now. That may soon change.
SF News SF Regulators Have Had It With Self-Driving Cruise, Waymo Mishaps, Ask State To Halt Expansion In light of 92 incidents in seven months of self-driving Cruise and Waymo cars stopping, idling, and causing havoc on San Francisco streets, the SF County Transportation Authority is asking the state to hold off on giving them more expanded permits.
Business & Tech Self-Driving Waymo Drives Self Into Construction Site, Doesn’t Know What To Do The latest San Francisco driverless car mishap involves an autonomous Waymo vehicle driving upon a construction site, stopping in front of a trench in the ground, then having no idea what to do as construction workers have a good laugh at the robot car’s confused state.
SF News Waymo Can Now Offer Driverless Taxi Rides In SF (But Can't Charge for Them) Joining the likes of General Motors-owned Cruise, Waymo — the Alphabet-owned autonomous car company — is now permitted to give fully self-driven rides in San Francisco after months of testing with drivers behind the wheel.
SF News Dolores Hill Bomb Returns, Self-Driving Waymo Car Gets Given the Business by Skate Punks Things really went downhill at the notorious annual Dolores Hill Bomb skater celebration Saturday, and while it appears there were no human injuries, a passing Waymo self-driving car got mobbed, jumped on, and tagged.
SF News Report: SFPD Already Using Surveillance Video From Self-Driving Cars An internal SFPD document obtained by VICE News shows that not only can the SF Police Department pull the camera video from autonomous Waymo and Cruise cars, but more chillingly, that they have “already done this several times.”
Business & Tech Video: SF Cops Try to Pull Over Driverless Cruise Taxi, Hilarity Ensues All haters of the ersatz training course for robot cars that San Francisco's streets have become are having a field day with a new video, posted earlier this month, showing an autonomous Cruise taxi in the Richmond District getting pulled over by the SFPD with no driver inside.
Business & Tech State Grants First Permits to Waymo and Cruise For Paid Self-Driving Taxi Service The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has granted its first, semi-full permits to Alphabet-owned Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise to provide autonomous-vehicle taxi service to paid passengers.
Business & Tech Waymo Is Suing the California DMV to Keep Its Crash Data Secret Alphabet's self-driving car arm is running up against a roadblock in its path to becoming a fully-fledged autonomous taxi service in California, and that is coming in the form of a legal battle over its crash data.
Business & Tech Waymo Car Hits Pedestrian in Lower Haight, Company Claims a Person Was Driving at the Time One of those omnipresent, sensor-topped Waymo vehicles collided with a pedestrian late Wednesday night, but the company insists the vehicle was not in self-driving robot mode at the time of the accident.
Business & Tech Why Are Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Constantly Hitting the Same Dead End On 15th Avenue? Neighbors on one street in San Francisco's Richmond District seem to be witnessing the training of robot cars in the art of the three-point turn — over, and over, and over again.
Business & Tech After Suing Uber, Google’s Waymo Is Now Subleasing Office Space from Uber The COVID-era corporate subleasing craze has paired some strange bedfellows, as the self-driving car company Waymo is leasing empty office space from Uber, whom they had previously tried to sue into oblivion.
Business & Tech If You Would Like to Hail a Robo-car in San Francisco You Can Do That Now With Waymo Google's self-driving car spinoff Waymo has just launched its autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service Waymo One in San Francisco, with a view toward getting rid of the "safety driver" altogether and letting the robo-cars do all the work.
Business & Tech Trump Pardons Anthony Levandowski, Convicted Thief of Autonomous Vehicle Trade Secrets Former Alphabet employee, Marin County resident and self-driving technology wunderkind Anthony Levandowski was one of 143 people to receive a last-minute pardon from Donald Trump on his way out of the White House.
Business & Tech Google Employees Have Formed a Union, But Only A Tiny Percentage Have Signed Up A smattering of Googlers, YouTubers and Waymo staff have formed the Alphabet Workers Union, in a move that could revolutionize the tech industry — or merely result in about 200 Google employees getting fired for vague “performance” reasons.
